I know that I’m different. It must be on my mind lately as I’ve written about it a few times here. I feel normal and right within myself, but I don’t fit in with the rest of the world. I notice things. I see the way that the spily milkshake makes an intersting pattern on the floor at work. I can hear the conversation of the students across the room, even as I’m reading my book. I can sense the connections between individuals as they walk next to each other into a store. Mostly, the things that I observe in detail are visual. You can find me mesmerized by a pattern that others would find meaningless. I am intensly curious about how things are made, how things have come to be. What materials made this? How are those materials manipulated? Who refined the technique? What circumstances is it now manufactured under? Every question leads to another question until the thing I know the best is that I don’t know very much. This is the preface to my story, or maybe the explanation as to why this event seemed so strange to me.
I got off work at Red Robin last night and stopped by Wal*Mart to pick up some photos. I was in full Red Robin regalia: dark jeans, non-slip black shoes, dark blue embroidered polo with the Red Robin logo loud and proud, nametag, buttons, and apron. So imagine me, and the unbelief that comes over me when not one, but two people ask me to help them locate items, within a five minute period. It shouldn’t surprise me. It happens almost everytime I’m at Wal*Mart in my Red Robin uniform. I am just amazed how the powers of observation have failed my fellow shoppers. Surely, if the large Red Robin logo and nametage didn’t do it, the handful of purchases, car keys, and wallet in my hand would be enough to let anyone know that I was not in fact working there. The first time it happened a lady actually stopped me in my long, fast-walking stride to ask me where the photoalbums were. When I told her that I didn’t work here, she looked confused. A minute or two later, while I was browsing the hair color section a man kept staring at me, and when I looked his direction he asked me where the sunscreen was. I did my best to look baffled and exasperated, but he continued to stand, open mouth in front of me. So I sighed, told him that I thought they were in the seasonal aisle, pointed him in the right direction and continued by saying, “but I’m not sure since I don’t work here”. He was gone before I finished uttering these words.


It is minute meetings like this that remind me that my everyday wonder and observation is not universal. Maybe it’s this lack of observation that makes people ask my sister and I if we’re twins. We are asked so often that now it’s a joke between us. The better part of the joke comes when we tell people that we are seven years apart and they gasp and then ask, “which one of you is older?” This has happened more times than I can count.
If anyone ever asked me why I teach art…I’d probably tell them that I do it so that I can make money, so that I can make my own art. But why teaching art when there are other ways to make money? It’s because I have found such wonder through observation, through noticing detail, intricacies, patterns. It is these observations that make my own work more interesting. I think they make everything more intersteing and theirin lies the answer to the original question, if asked by the principal of a school and answered by me trying to secure a job. “I teach art, Mr. Shiny-Desk-Man because I believe that first observation, and then expression makes the experinece of life more enjoyable. I teach art because it is the way that we communicate the best parts about being human. I teach art because it can enrich every moment of one’s life…even the idle moments spent looking at the milkshake spilt on the floor”. By the time I have finished this impassioned little speech however, Mr Shiny-Desk-Man will understand that we are vastly different and the interview will effectively be over.

=) elle!

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